Now that I have finished making some stock of 1911 grips I have turned my attention back over to my Browning. With the proper tools, and a little bit of experience under my belt now from setting up a process on the 1911’s, I actually found these were easier than before.

I stopped in at my local big box hardware store and the guy in the tool department was really helpful, after explaining to him that I was making pistol grips and expecting the look of disdain (side effect of California) I found out he made custom rifle stocks and we had a really good conversation about wood, tools and checkering patterns. In the end he sent me home with this little router. Their bandsaw blades might be crap, but this router is amazingly good.

So, I dove in and made some patterns, cut some wood, oiled it, burned it and stuck it on my pistol.

Here’s the results.

This set is made of Bubinga. Love this wood, really hard, burns nicely and look great. 15 days till launch and a lot of work left to do, including finishing the shopping cart for the website. Only minor stuff on that, but still – must be done!

I promise one day I will find the good camera when I need to take some shots. I think my wife has it in the baby bag… maybe.

**UPDATE**

Thanks to Say Uncle for the link. I will be launching my custom grip site Rimfire Designs on July 4th and will start by having 1911 and Browning grips. I plan on expanding the selection quickly

I was over at Home Depot (damn them for being along my walk to work) and while I was roaming the aisles with some rags-in-a-box, a couple of C-clamps and some sand paper I came across a set of DeWalt drill bits and decided to pick them up since I was short a 1/16th bit since it had decided to break on me a week or two ago. The other deciding factor was that these bits were titanium pilot point bits and the Craftsman bits I had been using were standard steel bits.

Fast forward to Saturday. I’m working on a set of grips that I am making out of Bubinga. This is a very hard wood that has a great dark red/brown color with hints of black. I decide to pull out my new bits and give them a whirl since I figure titanium bits will have an easier go of it than my cheapo steel bits and boy howdy was I right.

When making grips, I don’t start with a left and right side blank, I start with one slab of wood that eventually I will resaw down the middle and split into my two blanks. Generally my grips start off (for a 1911) as a 2x5x1″ thick blank that I first drill the mount holes and then cut to shape before re-sawing and then shaping the faces.

My new drill bits not only went through like a hot knife, but I also learned something. My old bits I would have to go back and slightly enlarge the hole so that the would fit on the pistol. They were always just a touch too small. My new bits make the mount hole the perfect size, no reworking required. So, all I can think is that my old bits are actually not the right size and are a hair too small.

As far as the grips I was working on, here is how they look so far – one coat of tung oil. I have four more coats to go and then I’ll varnish them.

So, I finished getting my worktable set up (a post on that later) and got to work on some grip stuff.

Here is a test run on a grip that I unfortunately messed up so it is essentially scrap, but scrap is good for testing ideas, so I used this one to test a way to do texture and design and then tung oiled it to bring out the color

Of course, this is just a beginning, I have much to do before I am in full production mode and ready to sell. Website is being worked on; still need to order mold material to make dummy guns with; need my wood burning tools; so much stuff that has to be done.

I figure I’ll probably be ready for full unveil of my grip website in June or July. I guess launching it on July 4th would be a good day to kick it off. What goes better with guns than fireworks 😀

So, this is your teaser shot of the day. One example of about twenty different ideas that I have put down on paper. There’s a whole lot more in my head too that are wanting to get out.

Hit the zoo yesterday with the wife and the offspring. The boy is growing in leaps and bounds and becoming quite determined when he sets his mind to something.

Yesterday morning we had him in his walker and he was trying to go through the doorway and get out of the bedroom where we were keeping him contained. To keep him in the room we had placed a floor fan in the doorway and had it on for circulation. Matthew came up to the fan, saw he couldn’t get around it and decided to ram it – and managed to move it about an inch.

He still wasn’t able to get out, so he backed up a bit and hit it again, which moved it a little further but still not enough that he could leave. So, he backed up about two feet, which made me think he was going to go some other direction. He wasn’t. He then moved as fast as he could and rammed the fan at full speed! At that point I decided to step in and pull him out of his walker before he got a really good run at it and broke the dang thing.

Stubborn kid.

Anyway, we hit the zoo and went to the aquarium where this time Matthew stayed awake for the sharks. As you can see, he thought they were pretty cool

We also hit the jellyfish again. Quite a difference from the last time.

And one of him hanging out with Quigley at the window. They like to sit there and watch the leaves get blown around. Quigley really enjoys Matthew and will give him baths sometimes. He also doesn’t mind that sometimes Matthew will grab his ears or flop on top of him.